Oh, plants, we could never be able to count the ways we love you! Your calming green leaves give us serenity, the oxygen you produce brings us life, and your healing powers bring us health. Truly, there is no doubt that plants are life, and we love life! And, as life comes with various fun and interesting bits of info, so do plants. That’s why we’ve dedicated this list to everything and all about our green friends - welcome aboard to our facts about plants roster!
Now, you might already know some plant facts even before checking our lineup, but there are loads more plant trivia to learn! For instance, did you know that a cucumber is a fruit and not a vegetable? Or that the caffeine that most of us adore so much actually works as a pesticide for the coffee plant? Or did you know that there’s a carnivorous plant capable of devouring a fully-grown rat? P.S.: That’s one of our weird plant facts, but you can be sure that not all of them are such - others are purely incredible!
We have to admit something here - the deeper we dug into these cool facts about plants, the more we realized how little we actually knew about our little leafy fellas. That said, these interesting facts did help us expand our knowledge, and hopefully, you’ll find them useful too.
So, without any further ado, let’s skip to the fun facts about plants, shall we? As usual, they are just a leaf’s length further down, and once you are there, be sure to rank the facts by their awesomeness. Lastly, share this article with anyone who might enjoy it!
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Oak trees do not produce acorns until they are 50 years old.
Elephant grass, which grows in Africa, gets its name from the fact that it may reach a height of 4.5 meters, which is high enough to conceal an elephant.
The entire dandelion plant, including the roots and petals, can be consumed.
My daughter says they're not tasty. She told me she tried one when she was very young lol.
Peru is the 'birthplace' of potatoes! That is where potatoes were grown initially roughly 7,000 years ago.
and sometime in the early 1800s, several potatoes boarded a ship to Ireland just in time for the Famine.
In Australia, there is a plant called as the "Suicide Plant" because its sting can have a long-lasting effect and inflict such excruciating pain that some people have committed themselves after coming into contact with it.
A cactus plant's water cannot be consumed! Although cactus plants can store a lot of water, this water is sadly unfit for human consumption. Although not poisonous, the acids and alkaloids in this water are damaging to human kidneys.
Yes, dehydration is damaging to human kidneys too, but drinking cactus water can cause vomiting, which makes dehydration even worse.
Sunflower appears to have one huge flower, but each head is actually made up of hundreds of smaller blossoms, or florets, which mature into seeds. All members of the sunflower family, including daisies, yarrow, goldenrod, asters, coreopsis, and bachelor's buttons, have this characteristic.
The spiral pattern in Sunflower Centers is the Fibonacci Sequence which is impressive for a plant that never took Calculus.
Cranberries float and bounce in water due to tiny air bubbles inside them.
Pro tip: If you are ever stuck on a desert island, lash hundreds of thousands of cranberries together to float to freedom.
One of the oldest surviving tree species is the ginkgo (Ginkgo biloba), which dates back roughly 290 million years. Another old species is the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides), which has been around for roughly 150 million years. Before they were discovered alive, both had been identified in the fossil record.
When I used to live in Brooklyn New York I always called these Dog Poop Trees because when they drop their berries in the fall they smell like, you guessed it, not roses.
Nectarines and peaches primarily vary in that nectarines have smooth skin and peaches have fuzzy skin. Both nectarine and peach fruits can be obtained by grafting peach branches onto nectarine trees, or the other way around.
The claim of having the hottest chili pepper in the world is still up for debate. The Carolina Reaper has already supplanted bhut jolokia, sometimes known as the "ghost pepper," which is 401.5 times hotter than store-bought spicy sauce.
Bluebell flower juice used to be used to make glue. Its bulbs were crushed to create starch for collar and sleeve ruffs during the Elizabethan era, and their sticky sap was once employed to bind books and glue feathers onto arrows.
Camellia sinensis, is the source of all teas, including black, green, and white. The processing techniques are the only thing that is different.
Anything you can put in a cup and steep is considered a tea ( unless it kills you, then it is considered a poison).
The world's fastest-growing woody plant is bamboo. In a single day, it can grow up to 35 inches.
Although the ancient Egyptians were the first to chronicle the technique of making herbal wine some 5,000 years ago, archaeologists have discovered evidence that grapes were grown to make wine in the Caucasus (modern-day Georgia) about 8,000 years ago.
The name of the pineapple came from European explorers who thought it had apple-like flesh and the appearance of a pinecone. The only edible members of the bromeliad family are pineapples.
Oleander (Nerium oleander), a lovely flowering shrub that is endemic to the Mediterranean, is deadly in all forms. The effects of ingesting oleander leaves on the cardiovascular, neurological, and gastrointestinal systems can be fatal.
Haiku: Oleander’s deadly, we also call it fatal, raven swoops on mouse
La Fete du Muguet, or the festival of the lily-of-the-valley, is celebrated in France on May 1. On the occasion, loved ones are given flower bouquets with wishes for their health and happiness.
A carnivorous plant native to the Philippines can 'eat' a full-size rat! Our advice - keep your fingers to yourself when near it.
That plant is not the Venus flytrap (pictured), which is native to the Carolinas. The one in the Philippines is Nepenthes, a type of pitcher plant.
Crocus sativus, a species of fall-blooming crocus, is used to produce saffron, a spice used in Mediterranean cuisine.
Banana is an Arabic word for fingers. Finger food, anyone?
When I visited Egypt in 1992, the bananas you could buy in markets were green (but still ripe) and much smaller than yellow bananas.
There are about 70,000 plant species that are used for therapeutic purposes.
Some plants are self-pollinators. They move the pollen grains from the anther to the stigma on the same flower. These plants can reproduce without the aid of pollinators like insects. Self-pollination occurs in very few plants. Peanuts, orchids, peas, and sunflowers are a few examples.
Carrots were originally purple rather than orange. Its new color is the product of human hybridization over many centuries.
Mainly by the Dutch to honour their Royal Family who are know as the House of Orange-Nassau.
Brazil got its name in honor of a tree! Brazil is a contraction of Terra do Brasil, or "Country of Brazil," which refers to the brazilwood tree. The term was given to the areas that were leased to the merchant group headed by Ferno de Loronha in the early 16th century to exploit brazilwood for the purpose of producing wood dyes for the European textile industry.
Argentina was founded by two best friends named Marge and Tina!
Plants may not have noses, but they use chemicals in the air to sense their surroundings. Dodder is a parasitic plant that adheres to other plants and feeds on their sap for nutrition. Yet, it can "smell" other plants instead of growing aimlessly in search of something edible. Dodder can feel which plants are healthier and so better able to supply nutrition, choosing tomatoes over wheat as its favorite food.
Some(?) can also sense when neighbours are being attacked by insects and take precautions against them.
The wishbone flower is a shade-loving annual plant called Torenia. Watch for small stamens in purple, blue, or burgundy petals that resemble wishbones.
Little kids the world over love to rip this flower in half whilst wishing for things.
Tulips were so expensive in Holland during the 1600s that the value of their bulbs exceeded that of gold. Tulip mania, also known as tulipomania, was the craze that contributed to the collapse of the Dutch economy.
The titan arum flower (Amorphophallus titanium), which can grow up to 15 feet tall, is the world's biggest unbranched bloom. The bloom has a smell comparable to that of rotting meat, therefore the common name "corpse flower." Another plant from the Sumatran rainforests, the Rafflesia, has a similar scent. As they don't compete with other blooms for butterflies and hummingbirds, both developed their aroma to draw pollinating flies.
As cucumber has seeds in the middle, it is a fruit and not a vegetable.
The vanilla flavor is extracted from the pod of the Vanilla planifolia orchid. Although the pods are known as vanilla beans, corn is more closely related vegetable.
The African baobab tree's trunk can hold between 1000 and 120,000 liters of water.
Being natural sedatives, onions might make you sleepy if you eat too many at once.
This is why a cup of warm milk with an onion floating in it is always recommended for troubled sleepers.
Certain plants, like moss and ferns, don't produce flowers or seeds. They create spores to replicate.
There was a very interesting (well, to me at least) story about two species of fern that had been discovered to have reproduced with each other. But the two species had diverted so long ago on their line of evolution that it was the equivalent of a human reproducing with a fish.
In recognition of the role A. W. Livingston of Reynoldsburg had in making the tomato popular in the late 1800s, tomato juice is the official state beverage of Ohio.
No. We have snow atm in Ohio, and we don't need another stupid thing like this. Only in Ohio 😩🤚
There are 200 seeds on a strawberry. It is the only fruit with seeds that are visible on the exterior.
Tree resin, also known as amber, frequently contains trapped plant matter or microscopic insects.
At a diameter of 0.004-0.008 inches, Asian watermeal (Wolffia globosa) is the tiniest flowering plant in existence.
A eucalyptus from Australia stood as the tallest tree ever - over 60 m.
115.92 meters. That's the tallest tree ever -- a coastal redwood in California.
Native to Mexico, poinsettias were introduced to US by Joel Poinsett, the first American minister to Mexico, in 1825.
The scientific term for blooming plants, angiosperm, describes the seeds as being carried in capsules or fruits. Gymnosperms are non-flowering plants like pine, spruce, fir, juniper, larches, cycads, and ginkgo.
Half the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from the Amazon jungle!
Not sure about this one, "According to National Geographic, about 70% of the oxygen in the atmosphere comes from marine plants and plant-like organisms."
The coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens), which grows along the United States' Pacific Coast, primarily in California, is the tallest tree in the world. It's interesting to note that a bristlecone pine holds the record for the oldest-growing tree in the world (Pinus aristata).
Avocados and pumpkins are considered fruits, not vegetables, from a botanical perspective since they contain plant seeds.
When you pinch the sides of a Snapdragon flower that resembles a dragon, the dragon's mouth will seem to open and close.
One of the top six economically significant crop plant families is the rose family which includes apples, pears, peaches, apricots, quinces, strawberries, and pears.
If you cry when you cut an onion, sulfuric chemicals are to fault. The National Onion Association claims that freezing the onion and slicing the root end last help to solve the issue.
Keep onions in the 'fridge. I used to cry every time I chopped up an onion, but not since keeping them in the 'fridge.
Several plants are employed as dyes. Tea bags, walnut juice, or stewed onion skin can all be used to dye fabric.
Garlic mustard is, in fact, a member of the mustard family, not garlic! In the Eastern and Midwestern United States, this invasive herb outcompetes native plants, endangering other native plants and the species that depend on them.
Peanuts are legumes related to beans and lentils, not nuts. According to the National Peanut Board, they are the only nut with greater protein, niacin, folate, and phytosterols.
Midges are necessary for the pollination of the cocoa plant, which may make them seem a little less irritating.
Aquatic plants are those that can survive underwater.
It’s literally in the name! It’s like saying “popcorn is corn that it popped, mindblowing”
Fun fact: potatos are part of the Solanaceae family which also includes deadly nightshade, tomatos, several types of peppers etc.
Fun fact: potatos are part of the Solanaceae family which also includes deadly nightshade, tomatos, several types of peppers etc.
